Credit for recovery from the financial crisis of 2008 belongs almost exclusively to the Federal Reserve. The fiscal stimulus Obama managed to extract from Congress was just barely large enough to register, so monetary policy had to be stretched beyond its previous limits. Led by Bernanke and Yellen, the Fed had to use unorthodox mens to engineer our long, slow recovery.
Now, the future of the Fed is in the short-fingered hands of the author of The Art of the Bankruptcy. His personal swamp of banker-advisors care only about curtailing the Fed's regulatory powers, and with four open positions on the Fed's seven-member Board of Governors, there is a strong possibility that technocratic non-partisanship could be swept away.
Right now, most attention is focsed on who will serve as Chairperson. Since the very competent Janet Yellen was named to the post by Obama, and Tr*mp is temperamentally incapable of letting anything Obama did stay in place, she won't be reappointed. That leaves candidates John B. Taylor, who would like nothing better than to destroy the institution entirely, and Jerome H. Powell, who would be content merely to destroy the Fed's regulatory function. The smart money is on Powell, the "compromise" candidate.
The Opiate "Emergency"
Our President has it all figured out, once again demonstrating just how smart he is: if nobody ever started using opiates, nobody ever would become an addict! The obvious means to achieve that goal is an advertising campaign. Let's see, we'll need a really clever and original catchphrase. Oh, I've got it! We can use Just Say No!
Clearly, no Federal money can be spent on addressing the opiate crisis: it's hard enough already coming up with ways to offset the costs of tax cuts for the rich, and the Good People really have little interest in helping a bunch of junkies — even if most of them are white. Hey, does anybody remember where we stashed those promos from Nancy Reagan? It's time to run them again.
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